Education and Optimal Dynamic Taxation

We study optimal tax and educational policies in a dynamic private information economy, in which ex-ante heterogeneous individuals make an educational investment early in their life and face a stochastic wage distribution. We characterize labor and education wedges in this setting analytically and numerically, using a calibrated example. We present ways to implement the optimum. In one implementation there is a common labor income tax schedule, and a repayment schedule for government loans given out to agents during education. These repayment plans are contingent on loan size and income and capture the history dependence of the labor wedges. Applying the model to US-data and a binary education decision (graduating from college or not) we characterize optimal labor wedges for individuals without college degree and with college degree. The labor wedge of college graduates as a function of income lies first strictly above their counterparts from high-school, but this reverses at higher incomes. The loan repayment schedule is hump-shaped in income for college graduates

Design of the 08ID-1 Protein Crystallography Beamline at the Canadian Light Source

We describe the design of the Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility 08ID-1 protein crystallography beamline that is being built at the Canadian Light Source. An in-vacuum small gap undulator will illuminate the beamline providing high X-ray brilliance and beam properties available at the Canadian Light Source that will allow studying small crystals (>20μm) and crystals with large cell dimensions (<1000Å). The planned automation of the beamline will allow for its remote usage

Optimal income taxation with tax avoidance

International audienceWe determine the optimal income tax schedule when individuals have the possibility of avoiding paying taxes. Considering a convex concealment cost function, we find that a subset of individuals, located in the interior of the income distribution, should be allowed to avoid taxes, provided that the marginal cost of avoiding the first euro is sufficiently small. This contrasts with the results of Grochulski (2007) who shows that, with a subadditive cost function, all individuals should declare their true income. We also provide a characterization of the optimal income tax curve